Music
Pyotr Il'yich
Tchaikovsky
Choreography
Peter Wright
after Lev Ivanov
Production
and Scenario
Peter Wright
Original Scenario
Marius Petipa
(after E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nuszknacker und Mausekönig)
Designs
Julia
Trevelyan Oman
Staging by
Christopher Carr
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by
Boris Gruzin
Cast
Herr
Drosselmeyer
Gary Avis
Clara
Iohna Loots
Hans-Peter/
The Nutcracker
Ricardo Cervera
The Mouse King
David Pickering
The Sugar
Plum Fairy
Miyako Yoshida
The Prince
Federico Bonelli
Rose Fairy
Mara Galeazzi
Artists of the Royal Ballet and Pupils of the Royal Ballet School
|
The Nutcracker
Royal Opera House
Covent Garden
13 Dec 2006 - 13 Jan 2007
This performance of The Nutcracker was dedicated to Peter Wright for his 80th birthday, a highly appropriate tribute because Wright's Nutcracker gives the story dramatic unity and point, and turns what had always been a mere spectacle for Christmas into a ballet worthy of its exquisite music. In the process it reveals, if further revelation were needed, how dansante the score is. Full of melody and sweet harmony, it has long seemed to disgruntled balletomanes that Tchaikovsky's score is wasted on the Nutcracker, and in any case is more of a concert piece than a ballet. Wright's beautifully simple idea - to treat the visit to the land of sweets as Drosselmeyer's reward to Clara and the Nutcracker for falling in love, and to incorporate the two of them in the Russian and Spanish dances - draws the previously disparate halves of the Nutcracker into a unity, and suddenly the coherence of the music is fully obvious too.
Iohna Loots is a convincing and enchanting Clara, dancing with youthful lightness and enthusiasm, swift, happy and responsive in her poise, radiating pleasure. The pairing with Ricardo Cervera is a stroke of genius, for he answers all these qualities in Loots, and matches her delicious talent with his own athletic grace. Between them they are the perfect young couple, delighted with each other, delighted to be in love - and delighting the audience in consequence.
The grand pas de deux between the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Prince, together with their solo interludes, is always a high point of The Nutcracker, and Miyako Yoshida and Federico Bonelli majestically lived up to the responsibility. Yoshida has a maturity and rootedness which translates into complete security of movement; she always seems solidly balanced in every transition, and is a great pleasure to watch. Bonelli's poise and looks make him a natural lead, and he has the strength and developing assurance to complement them. It was interesting to see Yoshida and Bonelli dance these roles together, because their individual suitedness to them needed to be - and was - mutually conformable, especially in the first long section where the Prince is very much the Fairy's lieutenant only.
In recent Nutcrackers imagination and design have come powerfully to the fore to mask the fact that in Petipa's original conception there was a one-act story followed by an unrelated series of entertaining dances. The brilliance of design, and the superb management of staging, is breathtaking in this production. Elaborate sets change in the twinkle of an eye, as if by Drosselmeyer's magic; nothing of the spectacular Nutcracker tradition is lost here, only enhanced by Wright's success in making the tale work. AC Grayling
|
